Some Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence (c. 2023)

[August1991]

1. I agree with those who believe that AI could be used to create fake videos and texts. Increasingly, it is not obvious whether a real person is writing a post or creating a video. (The so-called Turing Test.)

2. Moreover, this AI ability could be used for nefarious purposes: to distort what people think is true.

(Wow! As if that never happened in human history... Heck, in the history of life itself. IOW, the Turing Test is not new.)

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3. Current AI recognizes patterns, and then extrapolates. 

4. IMHO, AI will primarily revolutionize education - mostly in the age ranges from 6 to 16.  A lot of this education is rote and the questions/answers of students/teachers are standard. And for each generation, we have to do this. (The basic knowledge of reading/writing/arithmetic is not passed by DNA.)

5. For better or worse, teachers are slow to change.

6. I suspect AI will never progress beyond finding past patterns.

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A good book to read is The Book of Why by Judea Pearl.  

 

[August1991]

7 hours ago, Contrarian said:

1.  While it is true that AI can be used to create fake videos and texts, it can also be used to detect them, depending on how you look at the problem, there are several companies planning ahead already. 

2. Is this a new problem for humanity?! Manipulating humans and humans falling pray? Better have some strong filtration skills or some will just be followers.

....

Sorry, this is not new amongst humans or even animals - plants. Fraud is ubiquitous among life. Men cheat. Women detect cheats. "That slut!"

"Filtration skills"? To survive, an individual plant does better than fall "pray". Good luck in the gene pool.   

[August1991]

7 hours ago, Contrarian said:

3. Yes and it can be used to identify patterns in medical data that might be difficult for human experts to see.

4. For sure it will, the ideas that it can present will exceed of that of a human, that is for sure. 

5. Not until they realize how easy it makes their job. 

....

For point 3, I entirely agree. It is happening now.

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As to points 4 and 5, I agree/disagree.

5. Some teachers of math even now forbid calculators.

4. Slide rules created a new competency to teach. I reckon that AI will radically change the way we teach children around the world.

 

Edited May 3, 2023 by August1991

[August1991]

Several years ago, I was in Cuba and I left my Google phone as a gift with a waitress - she had told me her daughter liked math. The phone had an app to take a photo of two hand-written equations, and solve them. No Internet.

I gave her the phone and charger. Told her to let her daughter use it wisely.

[August1991]

8 hours ago, Contrarian said:

--
6. Premature conclusion. 

6. Perhaps.

But I reckon that the nature of life is random renewal - life and the Universe changes.

Heck, we cannot predict the exact position of an electron until we see it.

Current Artificial Intelligence is a bad extrapolation of the past. AI is co-relation pretending to be causation.

 

Edited May 3, 2023 by August1991

[August1991]

As my Cuban waitress saw, the phone could take a picture and solve a two equation problem for her daughter.

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Imagine if the phone could listen to her daughter in Spanish - and answer any question.

Imagine.

Edited May 16, 2023 by August1991

[SpankyMcFarland]

AI would appear to have the potential to change many industries, including education. One type of education anyone with an illness needs relates to managing their health better and AI offers huge potential here. At the moment, patients get to see their GP (if they have one) for a few hours per year. That’s not nearly enough to know all the specific details of how they in particular are doing on, say, the ‘golf course’ of diabetes - it’s more like a country, really - and where exactly they are failing. Is it exercise, diet, medication or monitoring that’s letting them down or other things? Where can they improve? With AI there’s the potential to carry a little healer around with you 24/7 who never stops thinking about how to make you better. Helping older people with cognitive etc. issues stay in their homes longer is another obvious opportunity for improvement with this technology. Such guardian angels will have a dark side, of course, but for those with chronic diseases such a bargain will probably be worth it. 

Edited May 18, 2023 by SpankyMcFarland

[eyeball]

"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."  

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/31/1179030677/experts-issue-a-dire-warning-about-ai-and-encourage-limits-be-imposed#:~:text=Chino%2FGetty Images-,Tech leaders warn that we don't know the full,fully grasp its eventual impact.&text=A statement from hundreds of,an existential threat to humanity.

Seems a little dire - I wonder what Arnold Schwarzenegger has to say about it?

Edited June 2, 2023 by eyeball

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, eyeball said:

"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."  

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/31/1179030677/experts-issue-a-dire-warning-about-ai-and-encourage-limits-be-imposed#:~:text=Chino%2FGetty Images-,Tech leaders warn that we don't know the full,fully grasp its eventual impact.&text=A statement from hundreds of,an existential threat to humanity.

Seems a little dire - I wonder what Arnold Schwarzenegger has to say about it?

Well, he's not here now but...

I had to laugh at that AI drone that killed its operator in the simulation.

Of course, now it's just a thought experiment, and not a simulation at all.

[August1991]

On 5/18/2023 at 3:05 PM, SpankyMcFarland said:

AI would appear to have the potential to change many industries, including education. One type of education anyone with an illness needs relates to managing their health better and AI offers huge potential here. At the moment, patients get to see their GP (if they have one) for a few hours per year. That’s not nearly enough to know all the specific details of how they in particular are doing on, say, the ‘golf course’ of diabetes - it’s more like a country, really - and where exactly they are failing. Is it exercise, diet, medication or monitoring that’s letting them down or other things? Where can they improve? With AI there’s the potential to carry a little healer around with you....

For standard questions, Generative AI (ChatGPT) works well.

But our GDP is 15% health and 15% education. Why? We are terrified of death and we care about life.

IOW. I suspect that ChatGPT will soon distort answers to medical questions - and make exam responses weird..

AI, machine learning, is based on what we did in the past. There's no Mozart. 

[August1991]

This ChatGPT will replace customer agents in poor countries.

Sadly. it will not replace teachers in rich countries.

[August1991]

Around the world, education and health care are now State sectors - yet slow to change. Why?

 

[SpankyMcFarland]

On 7/15/2023 at 5:44 AM, August1991 said:

For standard questions, Generative AI (ChatGPT) works well.

But our GDP is 15% health and 15% education. Why? We are terrified of death and we care about life.

IOW. I suspect that ChatGPT will soon distort answers to medical questions - and make exam responses weird..

AI, machine learning, is based on what we did in the past. There's no Mozart. 

I think ChatGPT is the tip of the iceberg. Google’s DeepMind has worked out millions of protein structures.

https://www.cnet.com/science/biology/googles-deepmind-ai-predicts-3d-structure-of-nearly-every-protein-known-to-science/

Helping to manage illnesses will be a dawdle by comparison. 

 

Edited July 16, 2023 by SpankyMcFarland

[Michael Hardner]

On 7/15/2023 at 5:48 AM, August1991 said:

Around the world, education and health care are now State sectors - yet slow to change. Why?

 

State operations are slow to change because there's no motivation to take risk at all.

[August1991]

2 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

State operations are slow to change because there's no motivation to take risk at all.

Surprisingly, I agree.

I'm conservative - I prefer slow change. 

[SpankyMcFarland]

Globally, health care is both public and private. What makes it conservative is the subject - us. A great-looking treatment can end up being a disaster if implemented too quickly. 

[Michael Hardner]

11 hours ago, August1991 said:

Surprisingly, I agree.

I'm conservative - I prefer slow change. 

Me too, but... and it's a big BUT... what we have in government now is no change, culturally speaking.

They would be better off with some risk taking right now.

[eyeball]

On 7/16/2023 at 5:22 PM, August1991 said:

Surprisingly, I agree.

I'm conservative - I prefer slow change. 

Not me, put the pedal to the metal. Change can't come fast enough for me. AFAIC we're stuck in the mud with two wheels in the ditch.